Switching from Static to Personalized Makes Results Soar

With consumers squarely in charge of product research long before they ever contact your company, content marketing is more important than ever. One of the most important forms of content marketing is the customer newsletter—and more and more are moving to personalized editorial.

What happens to results if you switch from a general-education newsletter to a fully personalized one? One community-based healthcare system found out. After sending a traditional newsletter for years, it began matching the content to what it knew of patients’ health conditions. Personalized content ranged from advances in treatments to schedules for clinical trials.

After about a year, the healthcare system conducted a readership survey to find out how the new approach was being received. The results? 

·          93% of respondents felt the articles were relevant and of interest.

·         73% read the entire newsletter every time it came in the mail.

·         77% said it was easier and quicker to read.

·         95% said they became aware of services that were previously unknown.

Not only did the healthcare system solidify its relationship with existing patients, but nearly every one of those patients learned about some of the provider’s services they didn’t know about before. Imagine the impact on revenues! 

Not every marketer can track to this level of detail, but there are many simple, cost-effective steps you can use to monitor your marketing effectiveness too. Personalized URLs, barcodes (visible and invisible), discount codes, and multiple landing pages for various iterations of the same campaign are all ways to track and measure results.

Talk to us about converting your content marketing into personalized content marketing!

~ Kelly Mank, President of Time4Printing, Kelly@Time4Printing.com
Google+ - Time4Printing
LindedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/KellyMank
Twitter -  www.twitter.com/Time4Printing 

Are You Marketing Through Content?

Have you noticed that your competitors are sending out more newsletters these days? Posting more white papers? Increasing their investment in blogs and social media? It’s the rise in the power and influence of content marketing.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 89% of B2B marketers use content marketing, and according to Curata, 75% of marketers are increasing their budgets for it. Are you one of them?
What exactly is content marketing? It is using content such as newsletters, white papers, video portals, and blogs to increase your website’s visibility with search engines and engage customers or prospects digitally and in print. Timely, relevant information engages the target audience, develops or reinforces brand awareness, and maintains client loyalty.

In a world of print and web templates and stock imagery that, on the surface, creates an environment in which all brands can look the same, content marketing establishes you as the expert in your industry. Content marketing can capture mindshare and create real competitive differentiation.

Content marketing is also profitable. When one provider of security incident and events management (SIEM) wanted to improve its lead generation, for example, it used content to build brand awareness during the early research stage of the buying cycle. It created a library of vendor-neutral information, then used this content as bait to attract potential prospects. The company used the information gathered through content marketing to identify which recipients were interested in which content. Then it used a scoring methodology to determine when prospects were most likely to be ready to buy.

The result? The company improved its qualified lead generation process and boosted revenues by 38%. 

Looking for ways to use content to educate your customer base, build brand awareness, and stay top of mind? Talk to us! We can help.

~ Kelly Mank, President of Time4Printing, Kelly@Time4Printing.com
Google+ - Time4Printing
LindedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/KellyMank
Twitter -  www.twitter.com/Time4Printing 

Response Rate, Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Sale

When you are evaluating the success of your print and multichannel marketing campaigns, how do you know which channels are most effective? How do you know which channels (or combination of channels) are delivering the most bang for the buck?

To answer this question, marketers often look at response rate, cost per lead, and cost per sale. What’s the difference between them?

Response rate is how many people responded to your campaign. If you mailed 5,000 postcards and 500 people responded, your response rate is 10%. Those 500 people then become leads.
Cost per lead is how much it costs you to get that lead. Let’s say that direct mail campaign cost you $5,000. With 500 responses, each response (or lead) cost you $10 ($5,000 / 500).

Not every one of these leads will turn into a sale. Let’s say you were able to convert 30% or 167 of those leads.  When you divide $5,000 by 167, you find that your cost per sale is $30.

Which one of these numbers is most important? All of them! Why? If your average sale is $35, you have barely broken even on this campaign. To improve your results, you could lower the costs next time or you could try one of these three things:

1. Increase the response rate to bring more sales into the funnel, lowering your cost per lead
2. Increase the conversion rate, lowering your cost per sale
3. Tweak the offer or incentive to increase the average revenues per sale to lower your breakeven point.

There are lots of ways to evaluate the success of a marketing campaign and improve your results. Let us analyze your results and brainstorm ideas to get the most out of your marketing dollars!

~ Kelly Mank, President of Time4Printing, Kelly@Time4Printing.com
Google+ - Time4Printing
LindedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/KellyMank
Twitter -  www.twitter.com/Time4Printing